Libby - A Quick Review Of the Damage Done

Although Special Counsel Fitzgerald has declared that this trial is simply about whether Libby lied and obstructed an investigation, part of the mood and backdrop for this trial revolves around the question of whether national security was actually harmed by the leaking of Valerie Plame's CIA affiliation. 

It is easy enough to find folks (generally on the left) who think that it was - in an iteration that is now almost a year old, Raw Story reported that Ms. Plame had been almost single-handedly holding back the Iranian nuclear development project.  Chris Matthews and David Shuster of MSNBC eagerly recycled that (No Keith Olbermann??).  However, David Shuster has been a particular object of our ire, since no distortion has been too absurd if it let him present a Bush-bashing angle on the Plame story.  So let's see if we can find some real reporters.

Dana Priest won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the secret CIA prisons and I think it is fair to say she is not widely viewed as an Administration mouthpiece.  Here she is, commenting on the Plame-Iran link in an on-line chat from May of 2006:

Q:... From what you hear, was Ms. Plame working on Iran, how important was she to the tracking efforts, and how much has her "outing" really set us back?

Dana Priest: It was reported before that she worked on proliferation issues for the CIA. The leap in this new round of information is that her outing significantly impacted our current intel on Iran. I don't buy it. First, no one person who quit clandestine work four years ago is going to make that big of a dent in current knowledge. But also, nothing like this came up at the time of her outing and I believe it would have. Think we need some actual details. At present it just doesn't smell right.

Here is Ms. Priest from November 2005 (with a hat tip to Jim E [but see MORE, where Foo Bar gets his due]):

Dana Priest: I don't actually think the Plame leak compromised national security, from what I've been able to learn about her position.

Other reporters have also chimed in but they look like righties if you stand far enough to the left - here is Andrea Mitchell:

I happen to have been told that the actual damage assessment as to whether people were put in jeopardy on this case did not indicate that there was real damage in this specific instance.

And Bob Woodward:

They did a damage assessment within the CIA, looking at what this did that [former ambassador] Joe Wilson's wife [Plame] was outed. And turned out it was quite minimal damage. They did not have to pull anyone out undercover abroad. They didn't have to resettle anyone. There was no physical danger to anyone, and there was just some embarrassment. So people have kind of compared -- somebody was saying this was Aldrich Ames or Bob Hanssen, big spies. This didn't cause damage.

Now, there is a bit of a problem with Woodward's statement: for legal reasons - mainly, they don't want to have to surrender it in discovery - the CIA holds off on performing any formal damage assessment until the legal dust has settled.  However, common sense informs me that the CIA does, in fact, perform something that passes for a damage assessment without waiting three, five, or however may years to takes for the courts to clear.

I exhort folks who seriously believe otherwise to read a few Le Carre novels.

MORE:  From the gracious and always interesting Foo Bar:

I'm sure I'd tip my hat to Jim E if I met him, but are you sure you're giving credit where credit is due ?

Yike!  Foo Bar was the tipster for the Dana Priest bit; Jim E has been a font of wisdom, specifically with a blurb linking Andrea Mitchell to the use of the word "operative" on July 8, 2003.

Fortunately, I was not under oath.  (Of course, if I had been, I would have reviewed my notes...)

 

Comments

[Jos Bleau]

Whaddaya mean no damage?

Sherlock Google at DKos found a death count back in 2005! Ok, it's more like 'pretended to see' than actually 'found, but still ...

See here

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/20/04918/1941

And this ask.metafilter thread was able to get an unknowable but large current death toll, not even including future wars and terror attacks that Plame would have prevented, but now can't.

http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/42136

[shaman ∞]

Cheney and Libby committed treason-
You can't damage these bastards enough.

[Mascturnascal]

Plame preventing future wars and terror attacks? Wow, read the new Bond, he's doing frontal nudity for gays in the next one.

Andrea Mitchell. No real damage. Maybe she doesn't watch the news.

Woodward. No one pulled out overseas. No pyhsical danger to anyone. Maybe this is why he went overseas to explain his Plame knowledge? They're dead. Most were from other countries so it's okay. Resettled? Maybe it's no damage. He mentions Aimes, but maybe that has more to do with the one yesterday.

Did the CIA employee have CIA legal cousel for the jury selection?

Hillary is doing the ME. Afghanistan, more troops. Iraq, don't like Malaki, bring troops home. Sounds like Chayes. NATO partner: be out of Afghanistan by summer and out NATO by the end of the year.

The NGO worker sounds alot like Plame or Chayes, but, hey, it's Hillary, so it's okay.

[ae]

The KOS story is new. If he is talking about the Mercy Corps employee(who became a provisonal authority employee upon death)who was hired under Sarah Chayes, she was assassinated by a sniper as she went to bulldoze a man's house with the Judges permission. There's more to the judge thing now with NSA not be renewed(ceasing to exist by not renewing the charter)and it will be jdges running the old NSA(DOD) program. She knew what she was doing, knew it was a setup, and probably knew the risk.

KOS,Chayes, Joe Wilson, the dead woman(who's name I can't find anymore, but there was aspecial write up in an RPCV magazine)and Shayes from the Intelligence Committee are all RPCVs. There was an assassination in Jordan. Foley was a USAID employee and was assassinated also, RPCV.

Alot of them were killed in Iraq in the military. One woman was the oldest serving or something and they shot her right after the article.

Yesterday they killed an NGO worker in Iraq and rumor is she is one too, but Hillary is there, so that may be the motive, to send a message, she worked for an all dem NGO.

The point to the assassinations would be that Plame was already blown by Aimes. He was RPCV too and that's how he got in trouble. Plame knew who. Plame got alot of people killed later and it wasn't leaks, unless the assassinations were to point to her husband, Joe, as knowing who Plame was and her histroy with PC, Aimes, and Howard. All those are RPCVs and that is who she married. That can be considered a job in that world and Joe's dad was a diplomat(CIA) in Spain while he grew up- see 'bask' bombings. She probably also knew that Aimes and Howard had the same CAItrainer,thatpersonsupposedly joined PC as a retired teacher a few years ago and went to Morrocco-that is supposed to be illegal. Morrocco makes more sense because of Chayes. Jordan makes more sense when you consider that Plame's boss was another foley at CIA(denied later) and Plame supposedly went there around that time.

So, KOS comes out with that article and they kill a dem working for a dem NGO in Iraq-Clinton is there and Afghanistan and is considered evidence that NATO partners should leave, so that's probably why she was killed.

[P]

Shouldn't have to say it, but it was Armitage, not Libby.

Of course their was ZERO damage from Libby.

[Foo Bar]

Here is Ms. Priest from November 2005 (with a hat tip to Jim E):

I'm sure I'd tip my hat to Jim E if I met him, but are you sure you're giving credit where credit is due ?

[P]

If Mathews, MSNBC, et al. were TRULY mad. They would be truly mad at Armitage.
THEY ARE NOT! Therefore their real issue is not the leak, but the hatred they have for this adminstration.

[cathyf]

Yikes! I walked into a Haldol commercial!

[clarice]

And you just noticed that,cathy?

[topsecretk9]

Something tells me that Cathyf has the perspicacity to make sense of it...enquiring minds are waiting Cathyf.